Today, First Lady Michelle Obama will formally announce a campaign to end childhood obesity. In one generation. This lofty goal is very much in need, as over one third of American children are overweight or obese. Mrs. Obama wants the program to focus on nutrition education for parents and kids, more exercise, and improved school lunches.

As we recently wrote, this campaign has slim chances of success. The reason is simple – it is far more profitable for America to “fix” obesity related ailments than to prevent them. The industries that stand to lose if obesity goes away are fast food establishments, junk food manufacturers, beverage manufacturers, health care, weight loss, and supplements.

Additionally, the underlying incentive system that has made junk food so cheap needs to be revamped. But the farm subsidies for corn, soy, and wheat will not be disappearing anytime soon. That’s because the USDA holds two ends of the stick – taking care of big Agriculture corporations while at the same time taking care of little kids. Who do you think pays better?

Sorry for the pessimism, and we hope to be proven wrong. But this initiative is like a tooth whitening service when a root canal is due.

What to do at the supermarket:

There is good news for individuals who want to change things for their family. Actually, with a few small changes, you can start improving your children’s diets. The clearest cut, though not always easiest, is the switch to drinking water instead of sugary drinks. In case you’re wondering, juice is a sugary drink.

Read nutrition labels and note the serving sizes. Many times the actual serving size is much larger than the one written on the box. This will help you calculate the real number of calories you and your kids will consume.

And offer more fruits and vegetables to your children. As Michelle Obama says “Sneak a few grapes in for breakfast, pack an apple for lunch, and make sure that they actually ate it.”

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The Journal of Pediatrics published a report on Monday showing an increase of 18% in food allergies in a 10 year period starting in 1997. This brings the total percentage of kids with allergies to 3.9% or 1 in 25 children under the age of 18. That’s about 2.88 million children across the country, or one in every classroom!

90% of food allergies are from 8 basic foods (soy, wheat, egg, milk, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, and shellfish), whose presence must be labeled on food products.

What is causing this increase?

“Nobody knows for certain” is the party line, if you ask government health organizations and others.

One explanation is that parents are now more aware of allergies than they were a decade ago. In their calculations, the study’s researchers took into account the heightening awareness to allergies, but even that does not explain the additional 450,000 kids with allergies over a decade.

Another option, named the “hygiene hypothesis”, purports that the relatively sterile environments of kids today don’t allow young bodies to develop strong immune systems, simply because there are no disease causing substances for them to fight. But then, for some reason, the underdeveloped immune systems overreacts to allergens.

Yet a third possibility, not investigated enough, is genetically modified foods. The modified proteins in GM soy or corn, whose byproducts are found in well over 50% of supermarket items, could possibly be causing new allergic reactions.

For most parents, luckily, allergies are a non-issue. But almost everyone has a friend or extended family member with a story about a child who has been diagnosed as allergic. That’s a curve ball that catches many folks totally unprepared. It means totally rethinking about how a family buys, stores, prepares, and serves food. Every meal, every day, home and out.

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David Brancaccio of PBS’s Now show interviewed filmmaker Robert Kenner, the director of “Food, Inc.” a few days ago. The movie takes a very critical look at the modern food industry and helps viewers better understand why supermarket fare for the most part is crap, and why 67% of Americans are obese or overweight. The full interview is 24 minutes long. Here are some good tidbits:

1. 90% of supermarket food has corn or soy products in it. (That’s because soy and corn are subsidized by the government, making them cheap to produce).

2. Fast food chains were the original drivers of the industrialization of food. McDonald’s is and has been for years the largest buyer of ground beef, pork, chicken, potatoes, and tomatoes in the US. And it will only work with suppliers than can provide a steady, uniform, reliable product 24/7/365. Real food doesn’t work like that

3. Candy and Soda are cheaper than fresh fruit and vegetables. What do you think poor people will choose to eat?

4. Food industry claims that consumers should show personal responsibility when choosing what to eat are insidious.

5. Food has not gotten safer over the years. Not if a single burger can have meat from one thousand cows in it.

6. Really sad – the federal government does not have the right to recall contaminated meat off of supermarket shelves.

7. A ray of light – consumers, through personal preference, convinced Wal-Mart to switch to milk from cows who did not receive growth hormones.

8. Watch out for “food libel laws” – Industry will sue you if you don’t talk nice about food products. Example: Oprah Winfrey was engaged in a lengthy legal battle with the meat industry for saying she’d consider abstaining from burgers at the height of the mad cow scare a decade ago.

9. The legal fees for the movie were 3 times higher than all his previous films combined.

What to do at the supermarket:

Your choices are what ultimately fuel the food industry. By buying unprocessed foods, mostly from the supermarket perimeter, you will avoid many of the pitfalls of modern industrialized food-like substances.

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It’s not the most important meal of the day. And it’s not the heartiest either. Lunch, the get-it-on-the-run or have-it-at-the-computer meal doesn’t get enough respect. And how could it, when products like Oscar Meyer’s Lunchable’s take its name in vain.

We tried and tried to find something healthy and nutritious among the dozens of Lunchable products. Unfortunately all we encountered was a nutrition desert, left in shambles by sodium blizzards and trans fat torrents.

Read on for an analysis of Oscar Meyer’s Lunchables Turkey & Cheddar Cracker Stackers… Read more…

We wrote about the huge US salad dressing industry in a previous post. Today we’ll look inside the label of one of the most popular – Hidden Valley The Original Ranch.

This dressing comes with some history. In the late 50’s, Steve and Gayle Henson would host guests at their dude ranch in southern California. They concocted a special salad dressing that was served to the guests, and the rest is history. Hidden Valley is now a ranch dressing empire. it is owned by Clorox (!?) of cleaning detergent fame.

Let’s take a peek inside the dressing, shall we?

Read more…

Image via Wikipedia

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave since New Year’s, you’ve surely heard of the recent salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter. In this post:

1. A quick recap of the facts.
2. Seven healthy alternatives, including tahini, almond butter and more. Read more…

Although food labels let consumers to learn about what they are eating, most spend only a few seconds if it all, browsing the available information. There is a large group of people though, for whom the labels are more than “nice to have”. People with with food allergies and intolerances, rely on labels to keep them alive. Just ask any mother of a peanut-allergic child.

The Chicago Tribune conducted a thorough investigation as to allergy labeling. The results were not impressive:

In one of the nation’s largest examinations of undisclosed ingredients in food, the Tribune reviewed thousands of items at 60 locations in or near Chicago, finding dozens of products obviously mislabeled. The newspaper also conducted 50 laboratory tests — more than the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration combined over the last several years — to determine precise ingredients.

Read the article…

What you need to know:

1. Label errors abound. For people with allergies, a mistake can be a deadly. Federal law requires ingredient labels to disclose 8 foods accounting for most allergies – milk, eggs, wheat, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish and shellfish.

2. Confusing synonyms. Consumers are not experts in food terms. A product including “durum semolina” must declare it as  “wheat” as well.

3. Cross contamination. As an example – oats are often tainted with wheat.

4. Poorly labeled imports. This is a result of lax regulations in other countries. To reduce this problem, the FDA recently opened offices in China.

5. Unlabeled food. The deli counter and bakery at the supermarket are not required to label foods. People with allergies should avoid them.

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flickr photo: jessicafm

Every year, 30,000 people are rushed to the emergency room because of an allergic reaction to food. Some 150 die, a high percentage are kids. In many cases, despite special care taken not to consume any product suspected to contain an allergen, horrified parents discover their child gasping for air and breaking out in hives, all because gluten, milk, or egg content were not properly disclosed on the food package label.

The Chicago Tribune provides a glimpse into the travails of one mother in her quest to protect her son. Through her story, we discover how helpless the 4 million Americans with allergies are each time they put a bite into their mouth. Highlights:

American children with food allergies are suffering life-threatening–and completely avoidable–reactions because manufacturers mislabel their products and regulators fail to police store shelves, a Tribune investigation has found.

In effect, children are used as guinea pigs, with the government and industry often taking steps to properly label a product only after a child has been harmed.

The Tribune investigation revealed that the government rarely inspects food to find problems and doesn’t punish companies that repeatedly violate labeling laws.

Read the entire article…

What you need to know:

In 2004, Congress enacted a law intended to help improve allergen labeling:  the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004 (FALCPA). The FALCPA imposed additional labeling declaration requirements on packaged food products that contain “major food allergens”:  peanuts, tree nuts, soy, milk, eggs, wheat, seafood, and shellfish.

The law did not, however, impose labeling requirements when food products may inadvertently contain major allergens. Why would a product contain an allergen accidentally? Turns out that even tiny amounts of an allergen present in a food are enough to cause a severe reaction and even death. Sometimes allergen free products are packaged in a plant that also manufactures products with allergens. In several cases products get cross-contaminated. That’s why you MAY see a labels stating “Manufactured in a facility that also uses peanuts.”Or may not.

This is because there’s is no clear definition of how to label products with a very rare chance to cause a very severe reaction. In September, the FDA held preliminary hearings aimed at improving allergy labeling. But don’t hold your breath; it will take a long while to make changes.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you are allergic, or a parent to an allergic child, always read the food labels and check for allergen warnings. This is not a bulletproof solution.You can do some prep work at home as well.

The Tribune put together a database with several thousand products that have been recalled over the past 10 years. You can use it to see the history of a specific product and help you make better decisions in advance of purchase.

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From the FDA:

General Mills is voluntarily recalling a single day’s production of Progresso Hearty Tomato soup because of a product labeling issue. Product produced on this date may have been mislabeled, and may contain allergens not listed on the ingredient label, specifically egg, milk, and soy.

There have been no reports of allergic reactions or illnesses associated with this product, however, the possibility of unlabeled allergens makes this a Class One recall.

This voluntary recall includes only 19-ounce Progresso Hearty Tomato soup with the following code date printed on the bottom of the can:

19May10 NV VN-3

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From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Food allergies in American children seem to be on the rise, now affecting about 3 million kids, according to the first federal study of the problem. Experts said that might be because parents are more aware and quicker to have their kids checked out by a doctor. About 1 in 26 children had food allergies last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday. That’s up from 1 in 30 kids in 1997. The 18 percent increase is significant enough to be considered more than a statistical blip, said Amy Branum of the CDC, the study’s lead author.
Read Article…

What you need to know:

Although not necessarily the only reason, parent awareness may be attributed to the rise in number of allergies. 30 years ago, a sickly child may not have been diagnosed as allergic to a specific food item. Luckily, many children outgrow their allergies. Until they do, parents and kids need to be on the vigil, including at the supermarket. The FDA requires warnings on food labels that contain one of eight categories of allergens (Milk, Eggs, Peanuts, Tree nuts [almonds, cashews, walnuts], Fish, Shellfish, Soy, Wheat).

Don’t confuse a food allergy, which is a reaction triggered by the immune system, with an intolerance to a certain food.  For example, milk intolerance means the body has a hard time breaking down the milk in the intestines, causing bloating, gas, and pain.

Lastly, there are many online resources for parents and children with allergies. Two good sites are: http://www.kidswithfoodallergies.org/ and http://www.allergysupport.org/

What to do at the supermarket:

Always fully read a product’s ingredient list. Check online for food recalls as some products get mislabeled.

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